People say to write about what you know. I’m here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don’t know anything. So write about something you don’t know. And don’t be scared, ever.
Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother’s voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.
Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
Can’t nothing heal without pain, you know.
I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes.
Let your face speak what’s in your heart. When my kids walk in the room my face says I’m glad to see them.
Like Guitar in Son of Solomon, and Son in Tar Baby, he believed that harmony could never exist between the races.
When you stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information.
When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?
All art is knowing when to stop.
I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.
Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes.
A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that.
They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations...
Lonely was much better than alone.
Our ancestors are an ever widening circle of hope.
If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.
One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to.
The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time.
If you’re going to hold someone down you’re going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.